Jonathan Eisen: Meet your microbes

How to Have Healthy Bowel Movements

A fascinating article by Dr. Ben Kim
To have healthy bowel movements, it's essential that you support colon and rectal health with all of your daily choices. Keeping these areas clean and healthy provides the following benefits:

1. A lowered risk of developing colorectal cancer, one of the most common types of cancer in industrialized countries.
   
2. A lowered risk of experiencing irritable bowel syndrome, chronic constipation, and chronic diarrhea.
   
3. A lowered risk of developing hemorrhoids.
   
4. Less gas production.
   
5. More efficient absorption of water and minerals.
   
6. A feeling of lightness, comfort, and well-being in your abdominal region.
   

Before we discuss specific choices that you can make to keep your colorectal region healthy and to have comfortable bowel movements, let's review some basic anatomy and physiology of this area.
Read more...

To help your bowels move with ease, Put your feet on top and bend your knees

Welles Step

It’s not the done thing to talk about bowel movements, but I just wanted to share this little gem of advice with you that costs very little but makes a big difference to your everyday life.

Thanks to Thomas Crapper, toilets became commonplace in the 19th century, giving us a sanitary way to dispose of human waste.  But for what we gained in hygiene, did we loose out elsewhere?  According to Dr William Welles, we did.  Through his research, he found that squatting was the best way to eliminate waste from the body, and that toilets do not support the abdomen in the correct way. Bowel cancer most commonly occurs at the beginning of the ascending colon or the rectum, the areas that aren’t supported when using a toilet, but are supported when squatting.  Further research suggests that constipation, varicose veins, hernias, haemorrhoids and appendicitis are all attributed to the use of the toilet.

So the simple solution is to use a step (a child’s bathroom step is perfect) and hug your knees into your abdomen when on the loo.  You’ll find it much easier to pass a motion/have a poo/whatever phrase you’re comfortable with!  Steps are widely available, cheap (if you’ve not already got one lurking around somewhere), and it’s a very easy thing to incorporate into your daily routine.   So don’t be ashamed, remember, even the Queen poos.   I wonder how many Welles Steps she’d need for all her bathrooms?!!

“To help your bowels move with ease,

Put your feet on top and bend your knees”  Bess Purser, 2009.

My Second Favourite Form of Exercise

My Second Favourite Form of Exercise

I’m not a gym person.  I’ve been twice, when I was about 16, with a friend.  I was all enthusiastic about it until she couldn’t go with me the third time so I didn’t go either, and I never went back.   The thought of going to a gym to exercise just does not get me excited at all, and I think this is a common stumbling block for a lot of people.   You know you need to exercise more, but finding the time and inclination is difficult, if not near impossible.  

Let me tell you about a one (or two) of my favourite forms of exercise and why I enjoy them, in the hopes that it will inspire you to find something you love to do too.  My second favourite form of exercise is dancing, of which I do two types.  The first is Ceroc, a type of modern jive that gets your heart pumping and your feet thumping, yet forces your mind to relax.   It’s sociable, energetic and easy (ish) to learn.   For the first couple of years of my Ceroc career (once I’d learnt the basic steps which only takes a few classes), it was the only two hours in a week when I wasn’t in charge.  It’s a male led dance so as a female, all you have to do is follow the man’s lead and giggle when you get it wrong (which happens frequently, even after four or more years).  The more I concentrate on what I’m doing, the more my body tenses and the more mistakes I make.  So I just have to relax and go with the flow, feel the rhythm and keep spinning.

The second type of dancing I do is pole dancing, which could be construed as controversial, as I pride myself on my professionalism as (amongst other things) an aromatherapy massage practitioner, and the in the wrong context, the two vocations together makes for an interesting career choice!  However, the pole dancing lessons take place in a freezing cold studio on an industrial park and couldn’t be any further from a sleazy strip joint if you tried, and I have no intention of trying.  Being just a beginner in this pole dancing lark, and being rather nervous before my first class, I have found it very enjoyable, again sociable (though thankfully no men this time!) and after just three weeks my arms are already more toned and my strength has improved noticeably.  It works pretty much all areas of your body, as I found when I couldn’t change into second gear for about three days after the first class, and I can still feel it in my lower abdominals now.   It’s also a very skilled form of dance (verging on acrobatics), and I have much respect for the others in the class who can hang upside down holding on with just their thighs, whilst somehow appearing graceful. I hope that one day soon I will have the strength, flexibility and fearlessness to enable me to do the same too.

Another form of exercise I enjoy is walking.  I love having a good stomp up a hill to get the blood flowing and the heart beating, then turning round to pause and enjoy the view before carrying on.  I also love the fresh air, seeing the seasons change and exploring my locality on foot. 

There’s bound to be an activity out there that you love to do, it’s a case of experimenting and finding it.  It could be golf, martial arts, abseiling or trampolining.   There’s nothing that beats the feeling of being in the moment, with the wind in your hair and the world spinning around you.   You don’t need to make an effort as it becomes a joy to do, you don’t need to make time as it becomes part of your routine and you don’t need to worry about exercising more as you can’t get enough of it. 

A round up of November's best web articles and videos

10 immune boosting flu shot alternatives [From foodmatters.tv]
The late and early months of each year seem to be when more of us catch colds and come down with the flu. So what measures can you take to ensure you are not sidelined with nagging colds or a debilitating flu episode?
This article will give you nine easy tips, with probably the most important last. There you'll also be able to access a Health Ranger video with Mike Adams, which convincingly debunks the concept of "flu season".
Your immune system
Boosting your immunity is important for coping with the cold and flu season. Of course, getting a flu shot with dubious efficacy is not one of them. All vaccines depress the immune... Read more

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Happiness = 8 hugs a day.  Here's the science bit:

Paul Zak: Trust, morality - and oxytocin 1894 ratings 49,826 views

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Forget Antibiotics, Steroids and Medication - Starve This Toxin out of Your Body [By Dr. Mercola]
Illnesses caused by mold exposure are a growing problem that few people are aware of, including most primary care physicians.   Environmental health experts are seeing increasing numbers of individuals with a complex myriad of symptoms directly related to mold exposure.   This has resulted in the proposal of a new term to describe this multi-faceted syndrome: Mixed Mold Toxicosis.... Read more

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"What's the best way of communicating in the world today? Telegraph? No. Television? No. Telephone? No. Tell a woman".
Bunker Roy: Learning from a barefoot movement

1761 ratings

Weight Loss Myth No 2

Weight loss myth number 2
If you eat a diet low in fat, you’ll lose fat and won’t be overweight.  It’s an assumption we all make, and with the supermarket shelves piled high with ‘Low fat’, ‘light’ and ‘0%’, it’s easy to get drawn into the hype.
So what fuelled this paradigm?  It seems to make perfect sense until you realise that obesity and heart disease are on the increase, and this low fat diet we’ve been following for decades appears to be having the opposite effect.

It was in the seventies when the research was carried out claiming a high fat diet leads to coronary heart disease, hence the birth of the low-fat craze in the early eighties that has been with us ever since.  But this research was flawed, not analysed properly, and has led us all astray. 

The research was based on LDL (low density lipoproteins, aka ‘bad cholesterol’) levels in the body.   Here’s what it concludes:
In the mid seventies they discovered that dietary fat (A) raises LDL (B):
   A → B
In the late seventies it was found that LDL (B) levels correlated with cardiovascular disease (C):
   B → C
So therefore, dietary fat leads to heart disease:
   A → C
Right?  

Wrong.  Here’s why:
There are two types of LDL that can currently only be tested as one:

1. Pattern A, large, buoyant LDL that floats through the bloodstream and doesn’t stick to your arteries (neutral)
2. Pattern B, small, dense LDL, which starts the plaque formation that causes heart disease (bad).

You have to look at the ratio of HDL (high density lipoproteins) to triglycerides (other fatty substances) to determine if the LDL you have is bad or neutral – low triglycerides to high HDL is considered good, high triglycerides to low HDL is considered bad. 

So what causes these different types of LDL to rise?   Pattern A is affected dietary fat, pattern B is affected by carbohydrates. 

And then what happened?   The American government started a campaign to reduce the amount of fat in the diet from 40% to 30%, and in true British style, we followed.  And achieved it.   But by reducing the fat in food, you also reduce the flavour, and it becomes unpalatable.  So to make it taste nice (and therefore sellable), food manufacturers added sugar, and sweeteners.   And what’s sugar?  A carbohydrate. And what do carbohydrates do?  Increase the bad form of LDL.   So we were doubly duped!
Click here for my previous article on sugar.  Sweeteners are just as, if not more evil than sugar – don’t get me started on them!   

Now I’m not proposing you give up all carbohydrates and eat bacon for the rest of your days, it’s all about finding out what’s right for your body.  Listen to it, it will tell you.  Feel bloated after bread?   Don’t eat it.  Get heartburn after fatty food?  Stay off it.   These are just a couple of examples of your body telling you it doesn’t like what you’re giving it.  And then of course there are my general guidelines such as avoiding sugar, exercising, eating whole, unprocessed foods, lots of fruit and veg and being happy.   Simples.